


Breach of Quarantine

by Marie_L



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, What-If, Worldbuilding, background Isobel/Noah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-04-05 07:03:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/pseuds/Marie_L
Summary: What if Michael managed to break through the glass?





	Breach of Quarantine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pyrrhical (anoyo)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/gifts).



_Quarantine breach. Security protocol implemented in six minutes. Quarantine breach. Security protocol implemented in six minutes._

Six minutes.

It might have been too much. Behind the glass in front of Michael, his surviving mother – _mother!_ – psychically exhorting that she loved him, but to get the hell out of a doomed building and save himself. Somewhere behind him, Michael was vaguely aware of Alex, verbally telling him much the same thing. Begging.

_The building's going to blow._

_I love you._

_You have to get out._

_I want you to live._

Somewhere in the depths of Michael's foggy lizard brain, clouded by anger and grief, came the thought unbidden: _Fuck that noise._ He wasn't going to run and selfishly save himself, not after finding her for the first time in seventy years. Six minutes. He could do this. Plenty of time.

He took a step back and removed his hand from the glass, diminishing the psychic connection between him and the bald figure in the cell. _Stand back,_ he thought at her, probably a second too late and out of order, but she seemed to get the message. She shook her head, her own grief now pouring out of her, but did step back and to one side of the crack he'd already managed to produce along the observation window.

“Guerin, we have to go, _now,”_ Alex was shouting at him, pulling at him. Michael shoved him off a little and raised his hand towards the glass.

“You go. I'll meet you outside.”

He shut Alex off then, not looking to see if he ran or not, not listening. All of Michael's attention and focus turned to one thing. Not to push, as his instincts were screaming at him to do, but to probe. To find weakness before blowing what energy he had left. The building had obviously been alien-proofed, but it was a crumbling artifact of the forties and no one with strength had tested it for a long, long time.

_Quarantine breach. Security protocol implemented in five minutes._

A smell of gas began to dribble into the room.

All the other people, the tortured aliens in their cells, grew still. Rooting for him in their dying breaths, he realized. At long last, one of them was going to escape, and at one of their own hands. _Follow the crack,_ someone may have said, or maybe just the concept got through. _No power to draw on, only what you bring with you._

His probing did reveal the structural flaw that led to his initial success. It was plastic-coated glass, old-school plexiglass maybe, on the prisoner's side. He'd cracked the glass on his side, but it was old on the other. Brittle, as plastic tended to get, especially on the left side, upwards from the glass fissure.

 _Quarantine breach. Security protocol implemented in four minutes._ The time was leaking away faster than he realized. Now or never.

Michael took in a deep breath, and without further deliberation mentally flung the metal roll cart next to him as hard as he could at the weak point in the glass. Energy bursts were great and all, but sometimes mass was needed to really smash something. The window cracked further, right where the corner of the cart hit it.

“Again!” one of the prisoners shouted.

Michael obliged. This time, not only did he hit the area with the cart, but also flung every ounce of strength he had at blowing the damn hole through himself. The cart partially punctured through, producing a foot-diameter opening in the window. Not enough, though. Three minutes would arrive any second now.

“Guerin, wait,” he heard softly next to him. Alex was there, holding an ax, the kind found next to fire extinguishers in _break in case of emergency._ Definitely in emergency mode now.

He grabbed the ax and rushed over to the breach, smashing at the edges of it, attempting to make it larger. Alex had the extinguisher itself in his other hand, and frantically used it as a bludgeon on the opposite side, chipping chunks of tempered glass and two-inch-thick plastic shards off. They were both bleeding now, but the hole was expanded to tunnel size. Almost there.

_Quarantine breach. Security protocol implemented in three minutes._

Michael reached through the hole to take his mother's hand. _I'll pull you through. Come on. You can make it. We can all make it._

She closed her eyes, and he floated her through. The glass cut a deep laceration down a pinched shoulder and arm. She grunted at the pain, but made no other sound, and popped out on the other side.

Without asking or thinking, Michael bent over and picked her up. She hardly could weigh 80 pounds. And then the three of them began to run. Down two flights of stairs, around multiple corners. They were down to _quarantine_ _breached, security_ _protocol implemented in one minute_ when they burst through the front door and ran towards the perimeter fence.

The building blew when they were less than fifty feet away. The blast knocked both Michael and Alex down, and Michael tried to collapse towards his mother, to protect her from the debris. From somewhere in that pit of a building he could feel the echoes of their screams, the ones who were dying, some with decades-worth of viscous hate in their minds, some with relief that the end had finally arrived. Those last considered him to be their liberator as well, and told him so in their final moments.

“Guerin! Manes! You guys okay? Take your sweet time, why don't y...” Kyle cut off as the smoke and dust settled, and he could see three, not two, bloodied people huddled in the rubble. He took a step back. Frightened of her, Michael saw in disgust. “Wait, is that one of the…them?”

“The them is my mother,” Michael took him pointedly. Even Kyle's big mouth shut up at that. The three of them managed to pull themselves off the ground. Looking around, there was a puddle of blood in the spot they were just huddled. Whose, Michael couldn't tell.

“We need to get the hell out of here, now,” he said, and the other two men wholeheartedly agreed.

* * * * *

Michael's first instinct was to take her to his own place, to the his hidden bunker as a hideout. However, it was a good bet that Master Sergeant Manes knew exactly where he lived and what was possibly there. His Airstream wasn't exactly the Fort Knox of security. His second instinct was to go by Max's to get healed up, and maybe get some armed backup as well. But based on the five thousand times his phone had buzzed, something was going down at Max's, probably involving Iz's serial killer husband, whom they had just poisoned and stuffed in a pod the night before. Talk about shitty timing.

Alex had a better idea. “My place, at least for now. I found a hidden basement under there. Also my father won't preemptively send a Tomahawk to my cabin.” He cleared his throat. “I think.”

Alex had ridden along with Kyle on the route over to the prison, but now he was crammed into Michael's old pickup truck. They had stopped, very briefly, outside the perimeter for Kyle to take a look at all of their wounds, and pull a couple bits of shrapnel out of Michael's back. Curiously, the deep gash Michael's mother had sustained through the window now seemed to be lessened, or at least not bleeding. Michael was privately surprised she had the strength in her to even partially heal herself.

In the truck, Michael nodded. His adrenaline rush was wearing off fast, and he felt drained. It was tough to drive and think at the same time. He could use some acetone, but then considered that she might need it a lot more. “The glove compartment. Offer her what's in it.”

Alex flipped it open. “You got a secret nail polish habit? Never mind.” He uncapped the bottle and handed it to her, crammed into the middle seat between them in the pickup. She sniffed it, then sipped it down slowly.

“Can you, um, talk?” Alex asked, after a brief pause. “Do you have a name? Other than, you know, Michael's everybody-thought-dead mom?”

“Other than N39,” she said, barely above a whisper. It sounded as if she hadn't used her voice in years. She cocked her head towards Michael. “Varis.”

“Your name is Varis?”

She shook her head and smiled. “His name, Varis. Was.”

“Varis. Sound familiar, Guerin?”

“No,” Michael said. None of it was familiar. He'd racked his brain for years trying to remember anything, any scrap of language or names from their old lives, all for blank nothingness. Only her face, and something about her presence or maybe the slight reflection of her mind, echoed for him. Like the fact that he'd sense Iz or Max before they entered a room, he recognized her more than he remembered.

“My name...Salis. Was,” she said.

“Salis,” Michael repeated. Still not ringing a bell. “It can still be Salis if you want it to be. I'm not calling you Number 39.”

Salis reached over and laid a hand on his, gently, over the steering wheel. Not to drive for him, or use her powers. Nothing glowed or heated up. Just a gentle reassurance, as if that was all she could handle right now. Then, surprisingly, she did the same to Alex. Who, to his credit, allowed her to touch him, even though she could very well have attacked him or drained him, and it would be hard to blame her.

It was probably the first non-coerced physical touch Salis had experienced in seventy years.

“You are the son of Manes,” she said to Alex after awhile. Not accusatory, just stating a fact.

“Um, yeah,” he replied. “Sorry. I promise I'm not my dad.”

“No one is, that is the point of having children,” she said. “And the other one?”

“Son of Valenti,” Michael said through clenched teeth. Obviously Kyle's dad had been involved in the alien prison, although Michael wasn't up to speed with the details. He and Alex needed to have a real talk, also obviously.

“Ahh,” Salis said. “Your father put that one into Edlik's cage. He wanted to kill us and dissect these bodies and liberate us from our bonds. Your father insisted on more testing.”

“He's a monster,” Alex said. Quiet, by Alex's standards, shell-shocked. It was a lot to absorb. “I'll … I'll tell Kyle the truth.”

“Sounds like Kyle's dad was only one step down on the Mengele levels,” Michael muttered. The fatigue gripping him was tipping over to exhaustion, and he clutched the steering wheel tighter to keep focus on the driving.

“Guerin, you look beat,” Alex said. “Maybe I should drive. It's gonna get dark soon too, and I know the route anyway.”

“I got it, I got it,” Michael protested, but even he sensed it was a losing battle.

Salis squeezed her hand over the top of his ever so slightly. “Michael,” she said, pronouncing the name carefully, “let your _shadich_ drive. You need to rest.”

“ _I'm_ the one who needs to rest?” Michael said incredulously, and what the fuck was a shadich? But he admitted to himself that he was too tired to care, and pulled over to the side of the road. No point in arguing with the both of them.

Salis didn't seem tired at all. Energized, jubilant even, at facing freedom at last. Where did that strength come from? Maybe she had her own adrenaline high.

As soon as he was on the passenger side, even before Alex had taken off again, Michael drifted off, his mother's hand resting on his own. He was vaguely aware of his phone ringing and ringing, piercing the otherwise blissful blackness of sleep.

* * * * *

Alex shook Michael awake, after the truck rolled to a stop. The brief touch was a comfort to Michael, although he couldn't say why; dealing with Alex had always been one part soothing, one part pants-on-fire-scorching. Outside, the sky was dim but not totally black yet, with the sun in the west casting a roiling pink over the black clouds of an impending storm. For a second Michael didn't remember where he was. He'd never been to Alex's cabin before.

“You might want to check your phone,” Alex told him. “Max keeps calling you.”

Max. Noah. Isobel. He checked his text messages first, which told the story is quick succession:

_Noah's awake out of pod, get over here now._

_Dying serial killer in my house. Iz says no antidote._

_Where the fuck are you???_ _Better be dead Guerin._

_Not talking. You want answers, get over here._

And then, very recently, a simple, _Noah's dead._

Oh. Apparently the pod prison hadn't worked out. Michael couldn't muster up the energy to care. Or call back, frankly. He sent both Iz and Max a short message: _Come to Alex Manes_ _place_ _. More important than serial killer._ He typed out _Survivor of 47 crash_ before deleting it; it wasn't a stellar idea to leave a text trail of their activities. Even with Alex and Kyle's interactions with the prison staff, they could still maintain plausible deniability on any of the aliens escaping.

Then he added, _Have some answers. Both of you come. Swear its important._ Then the address, and he shut off his phone. Probably stupid to send even that over text, but he just couldn't face an actual conversation right now. They needed to see for themselves, not have it told to them in bloodless words.

Next to him, Salis was still sitting in the truck, silently leaning against him and watching his typing. “The humans' technology has improved,” she observed.

“Since the forties? Sure.”

“Since we found this planet three thousand local years ago.” She pointed at the screen. “Your friends? You trust them with your secrets?”

“Isobel and Max are...like us,” Michael said, waggling his phone between them. “We woke up from the pods together, over twenty years ago.” He didn't add, _they got a family, I got the shitty end of humanity's stick_. A topic for another time.

“Linel and Nastik,” Salis said, a touch of marvel in her voice. “All three of you survived. I did not think possible.”

“Somebody picked a good cave, I guess.” He slid out of the truck and held out a hand to help her too. “Come on, let's talk inside. It's going to rain soon.”

The interior of Alex's cabin was cozy, clean and comfortable. Apparently the military had cured Alex of all slobbish single dude habits, because the place was spotless. Except for one thing: he had shoved a heavy wood coffee table out of place, revealing a trapdoor beneath it.

“I want to show you this, before we go any further,” Alex said. “Kyle's dad built this … room under here. It's creepy, but makes a good hiding place. In case someone comes.”

They all peered down the hole. No one wanted to actually descend the ladder. “Good to know,” Michael said dryly. “You weren't planning on sticking her down there now, were you?”

“What? No. I'm sure she's had enough prison cells. I just wanted to show you in case my father or brother show up.”

“Good,” Michael said, and with a flick of his hand slammed the hidden door shut and shoved the table back over the top of it. His mojo was still intact, excellent.

Alex wandered into the sole bedroom in the cabin, and came back out with a pile of clothes. “For you,” he said, handing them to Salis and motioning to his bedroom for some privacy. A flannel shirt, some khakis, all of it probably too large for Salis, but better than old hospital rags. “Do you want something to eat? Maybe, uh, some soup?”

“Soup?” Michael said. “Oh yeah, let's open a can of Cambell's in celebration of my mom being alive.”

“She should take it easy, Guerin,” Alex said evenly, not rising to the bait. “Slowly. They've obviously been starving them to keep them weak. You know, once I heard a lecture about the liberation of the camps in the Holocaust. Some of the soldiers would give out their rations to the liberated prisoners. And then some of them died, because their systems couldn't handle a goddamn chocolate bar.”

Salis looked from one man to the other, then nodded. “Energy first, then mass.” She pointed to an electrical socket low on the wall, near a lamp sitting on a side table. “Open that for me.”

“Wait, what?” Alex said. Michael grinned and flung the socket cover across the room. “Can you guys _try_ not rip up my place while you're here?”

“I'll fix whatever you want for you when we're done, just let her be,” Michael said.

Salis dropped the proffered clothes onto the table and crouched down next to the open outlet. She grasped two of the exposed wires and closed her eyes. No sparks flew, but a faint buzzing noise began to grind, as if something too powerful for the grid was plugged into it. A faint frisson of electricity filled the room, and even a few feet away Michael could sense the reviving effect of it. He wondered why he never thought of that before, or why Max didn't either – after all those years of Max blowing out circuits whenever he overloaded. Maybe it was the body's powers demanding a recharge, literally.

When she evidently had enough, Salis teetered back to her feet. She seemed rejuvenated in some undefinable way – maybe a bit younger, maybe moving a bit faster. The gash on her arm had closed over now, although a faint line was still visible. Maybe, like Michael's hand, she preferred a little scarring to remind her of what happened.

“I would like soup now. Thank you,” she told Alex, and placed her hand over her chest and gave him a slight bow. He nodded.

When Alex had hobbled to his small kitchenette, Salis beckoned Michael over. He hesitantly closed the four paces between them, unsure what to do now that they were alone together for the first time. Without warning, Salis wrapped her arms around him. It may have been the first and only surprise hug in Michael's conscious memory. After a second's pause he wrapped his own arms around her in response, drinking in the rare contact.

And inside his head too he felt her presence, not invasive, just loving. They shared the same mindscape, not unlike the telepathic head space Isobel could suck someone into at will. Here Michael could feel her love, and relief, and euphoria for having not just survived, but escaped at long last. _I did not dare think that you had lived, even when you did not die in the crash,_ she thought at him. _I couldn't bear to think of it for many years. No matter what they did, none of us ever gave you three up._

He wanted to ask so many questions. He wanted to cry. He wanted to say _I love you too_ but the words refused to form, even in his mind. Michael's body felt frozen in place, as if it couldn't decide between too many alternatives. So he chose to stay standing, and hugged her.

* * * * *

A half hour later, a truck pulled up next to Michael's. Max and Isobel. Salis had changed her clothes and was delicately sipping her acetone-laced chicken soup at the table, while Alex was running around changing sheets.

Through the window, Isobel looked disheveled and grief-stricken, the worst Michael had ever seen. It was a shocking contrast to her normally well-manicured self. She had lost her husband, he remembered, both physically and psychologically. He'd been mentally assaulting her for over a dozen years. And Max… Max just looked pissed off, likely at having to deal with Noah and the Isobel fallout by himself. Michael mentally shrugged; he'd get over it.

“Michael, where in the hell have you been?” Max demanded as they walked in the door. “What are you doing here?” He stopped short at the sight of the old woman hunched over Alex's small kitchen table, wearing flannel and sipping soup.

“Alex found a prison, part of the coverup of the 47' crash,” Michael said softly. “We went over there, thinking it was abandoned, but it wasn't.”

Max literally staggered from the news, and took three steps towards Salis in shock.”You're a _survivor?_ ” he asked. “You've been alive this whole time?”

Salis looked at him with saddened eyes. “I'm so sorry you children had to raise yourselves alone.”

“We weren't alone, we had human help,” Max said, and sat down at the table. He glanced at Michael. “Granted, some of it was better than others.”

“I'm sure there were kind people, but they were not _your_ people, Nastik. Do you even remember your name?”

“No,” said Max.

Isobel, who had not spoken a single world since entering the cabin, sank down slowly on Alex's couch. She seemed dangerously out of it, almost in one of her dissociative states, and Michael wondered if it might not have better to let her sleep and fill her in later. But then again, it might be equally dangerous to leave her alone, in the house she'd shared with that monster for the past five years.

“She looks in need of _drashol_ , healing of the mind,” Salis said, as if reading Michael's own mind. Maybe she had; Michael had no idea what her powers were. “What has happened?”

“There was a fourth survivor, who was trapped in a damaged pod for many years,” Max said. “He apparently went a little crazy in there. Used Isobel's mind and body to get out, and killed a bunch of people to gain power. And he married Isobel.”

“He _married_ her?” Salis said, shocked, as if that were the most grotesque part of the story. She pushed her chair back and walked over to the couch, then sat next to Isobel, carefully not touching her. “Did he force a bond on you, child?”

Isobel managed to look up at her. “I don't even know what that means,” she said. Angry, as if they had no right to be discussing her, as if she wanted nothing more than to sink down into the sofa and disappear.

Salis sucked in a breath. “You all know nothing, not even the knowledge of children.” Sad, and angry herself. “A soul bond, child, the mark on your chest. Once permanent, you can never bond with another again. A forced bond is one of our most heinous crimes. Difficult to force, but with mind control, possible.”

“Oh,” Isobel said. “No, he never did that. No marks, We were pretending to be human with each other.” She seemed a bit relieved at knowing there was at least one line Noah wouldn't cross.

“Wait, the mark is a soul bond?” Max asked, no doubt thinking of the glowing handprint he'd left on Liz while healing her. Or all the marks Noah had left on his victims, come to think of it. “But it fades pretty quickly.”

“There are many temporary bonds, when energy flows from one person to another. But only one soul bond. At the right time, with your chosen person, it does not fade. It lasts as long as you live.” She unfastened the top button of her shirt and pulled at the neck opening, revealing a faint glow on her chest. It was less bright than Max's shimmering healing marks, but still clearly of the same kind. “My partner died in the crash,” she added sadly.

“And what about our parents?” Max asked softly. “Did they die in the crash too?”

Salis paused. “I believe yours did. At least I never saw them after. But one of Linel's mothers” – she nodded towards Isobel – “was captured. They killed her early on, along with all the others able to move mass.”

“ _One of_ my mothers?” Isobel said. “Like, there was more than one?”

“Of course you can bond with whomever you like,” Salis said, amused. “Those sorts of preferences were removed long ago. A tragedy, yes, when one potential _shadich_ is not attracted to the other. No point to it.”

“So basically what I'm hearing is confirmation of my theory of alien bisexuality,” Michael said, a little too smugly. Not that he'd had a whole lot of evidence to back it up before now.

Salis waved a hand, as if it was inconsequential. “The important part is finding one's partner. A time of great joy, when you are young. The humans have no true bonding, and it's hard not to feel sorry for them for it.”

She slumped back in sofa, diminished suddenly. Perhaps the recharge was wearing off. Michael too felt exhausted again, ready to hit the sack, despite the storm now raging outside. Alex had busied himself by stoking a fire in woodstove to heat the cabin, although he was no doubt listening to every word as well.

“Hey, Alex, can we all stay over?” Michael asked. “I know it's a lot, but its been a log day. I think we all need to rest before the starting up the interrogation again.” Although in truth, he was dying to ask more questions, question her all night about who they were, where they came from, and why they were here. But the day clearly been a sucker punch to everyone.

“I mean, I can drive us home, Michael,” Max complained. “And come back in the morning.”

“I've got plenty of sleeping bags, and there's an extra room below us,” Alex told him. “You're welcome to stay.” He held up a hand as Max began to reflexively protest. “This alien convention is easily the most interesting thing that's ever happened out here. And all of us have a triple-whammy day. At least sleep through the storm.”

Max sank back in his chair. He, too, had drained his last resources, and obviously wanted more answers as soon as possible. Isobel sat rigid still where she was, and closed her eyes.

“I would like to sleep,” said Salis. “In the morning, when we all have rested, I will tell you the story you've been waiting to hear.”

Somehow that pronouncement settled things.

Alex gave up his bed to Salis, and although she seemed uneasy, she waved him off. Michael wondered if she would actually sleep, but at least she wanted privacy, a wish he was happy to grant. Isobel, unexpectedly, wanted to bed down in the weird dungeon, as if it made her feel more secure to be in the hidden room. Max grabbed a sleeping bag and bunked down next to her on the floor.

Which left Alex and Michael, alone in the living room. The furniture had been moved off to one side to avoid the hole in the floor, and Alex laid out a few blankets on the sofa pushed against a wall.

“Here, Guerin, you can have the couch. I'm going to keep watch.”

“Watch?” He stretched out, head propped up n his hands, while Alex awkwardly plopped himself below Michael on the floor with his back against the couch. “You think your father will make a move?”

“I don't know,” Alex said.”I'm not even sure they'll have noticed an alien has gone missing, at least not yet. You both left a lot of blood outside the facility, though. They're gonna know someone was injured, and probably know that someone wasn't human. Maybe the rain will wash away the evidence before anyone with authority gets a look at it.” He adjusted himself into a more comfortable position, propped up with a pillow, and pulled out a laptop. “I'll wake you up for a late watch if I get too tired.” They spoke softly, so as not to disturb the other guests.

“Any word from Kyle?”

“Yeah. He wanted to get going on the tapes right away. Still seems like he wants to be left alone, but I dunno. He seemed badly shaken up. That's got to be a lot to absorb.” Kyle had taken off straight from their powwow after the prison, immersed in his own obsessions regarding his father. Michael predicted he'd be back soon, to seek his own answers from Salis, a living witness to his father's death.

“You're being weirdly nice to the guy who basically tortured you in high school.”

“People can change,” Alex said. “You've got to let them change, or the world stays just as shitty as always.” He paused a moment from his typing, and set the glowing laptop to one side. “I mean, I basically abandoned you after… after what my father did. It was hard to even look in the mirror, and all I wanted was to get to a place where I could face myself again. I'm sorry.”

Michael hardly knew where to begin with this conversation. Why did all the craziest days of his life, the important ones, have to come bundled with the heaviest emotional baggage? God, he needed sleep.

In truth he'd been pulling away too. It was so very tempting to let the past go, let old loves lie, and move on to something else. His obsession with the crash, too, had seemed waste of ten years, sucking away time he could have spent on real relationships instead of seventy-year-old wreckage. But now it was all catching up to him – real survivors, real answers, real family. Even Noah's big revelation had, in his sick way, smashed through the inertia of their fake human lives.

But here was Alex, who had called him family. For real too.

“I … wasn't ready for an intense thing back then,” Michael finally said. This was a bit of a lie, since _intense thing_ was the main appeal of their relationship. But also its greatest flaw. “So I left you too. I mean, a lot of shit happened just after that, so that kind of compounded it. It was easier to let you go off and do what you were gung-ho to do. And now you're back and _I_ don't know what to do.”

“What do you want to do?” Alex asked softly.

“I wanted to have a fun, hot fling, that's what I wanted,” Michael countered. “And now fucking soul-bonding is on the table, whatever that means.”

They both chuckled at that, maybe a bit nervously. “That sounded like something with a lot of cultural baggage attached to it,” Alex said. “Not a thing you're going to do in a day. Although there's something to be said for picking someone and having them always there for you, through thick and thin.”

“A true 'death til us part'? Is that what _you_ want?”

“Sometimes,” Alex admitted. “My parents split, my dad's an abusive asshole who still tries to control me. Then I go and join an organization where I've got to be in the closet for years, which sucked just as much as it sounds. Boring domestic normalcy and us against the world is pretty appealing. But I've got to face the fact that it's probably a dumb fantasy.”

“Hey, its not dumb,” Michael said. “Unrealistic maybe but not dumb. You know, when I was a kid, I used to have this fantasy where my alien parents would come swooping down from the sky and take me away. Didn't matter where, anywhere but Roswell. Fantastic, star-filled destination just a bonus. The point was, someone somewhere cared about me and would take me away.” He reached out and rested a hand on Alex's shoulder. Not sexually suggestive, but a thank you. “Today's the closest that fantasy has had to coming true. Except we're the ones who swooped in and rescued my family.”

Alex turned and ran his hand along Michael's, cool to the touch, like every human. Longing. Loneliness. Michael was struck by how much they wanted the same things, and yet perennially couldn't get it together. “I meant what I said today,” Alex said. He paused a beat, then added, “Did you?”

Oh yeah, that. Alex was right, Michael made a terrible liar.”I wanted you to get the hell out of there, so I said what I said. I mean, it really was cosmically stupid to stick around in a building about to blow up.”

“Well, you needed more heavy metal objects to fling at the window,” Alex countered. “It was your mom, Guerin. You weren't going to budge, and I wanted you to live through it.” He caressed Michael's hand, and drew it to his lips for a kiss. “ _Needed_ you to live through it.”

Michael collapsed on his back on the couch with an exhale, torn between his fatigue and the obvious make-out potential here. Every time with Alex. Every goddamn time, they came crashing back to each other. “Man, I got to sleep,” he said, rubbing his face.

Alex snorted and turned back to his laptop. “Close your eyes, Guerin. I'll still be here in the morning.”

He would, and Michael did.

* * * * *

Michael woke up early, after what barely felt like a power nap. Alex's laptop glowed next to him on the floor, it's clock at _6:41._ Behind him he could hear Alex puttering around, maybe making coffee, and murmuring coming from the hole in the floor. Max and Isobel had woken up early too. Maybe they had all woken each other up. Through the windows of the chilly cabin, the sun was barely over the horizon.

Salis emerged from Alex's bedroom, looking much the same as the evening before. Old, but energized, as if her life suddenly had a purpose again. “You children needed more sleep,” she said disapprovingly, but over to the kitchen table anyway and sank into a chair.

“You want some?” Alex said, motioning to the percolator. “It's, uh, called coffee.” He placed a mug in front of her and she sniffed it, dubiously, but placed her hands around its warmth. The steam emerging from the cup immediately snuffed out, as if she were sucking the heat energy straight from it via her hands.

Michael opted to sip his cup the more normal way, and plunked himself down in a chair next to her.

“So, the morning news,” Alex said, as Isobel and Max pulled themselves up from the basement room. “I couldn't find any evidence that my brother or anybody else discovered that you went missing, Salis. So that's good news. The bad news is they may start sifting through the rubble today to take a census. Hopefully the rain last night washed away some of the evidence we left.”

He took a breath. “The other bad news is my father's back in the States, exact whereabouts unknown. I've let Kyle know to be on the lookout for him, but we should watch too. I've disabled the Project Shepard bunker at least.”

“Project Shepard, that's the secret government program to track down aliens?” Max asked.

“One of them. I think,” Alex said. “Caulfield may have been counted as a separate project. I still can't trace the funding or authorization for that facility after its supposed closing in the seventies. Project Shepard was officially closed down only seven years ago.”

Isobel still looked exhausted, and Max only marginally better. Hunted. Michael wondered if this might be the final straw to get them to all leave Roswell, finally, for good.

“You all are tired,” Salis said, and again Michael had to wonder if she were somehow reading their minds. Then again, they did indeed look terrible. “You need energy. More than food, or this drink. The soul must be replenished.” She looked up at Isobel. “You did not take the murderer's soul energy, did you? You had every right.”

“His energy? You mean the power he gained from murdering those women? No. No,” Isobel said. “I don't… I didn't want anything from him. I just want to forget.”

“There can be no forgetting, and it was a waste. But you should still recover your strength.” She stood up and motioned them over to the exposed power socket from the day before. “Observe. Imagine your hand is one of these devices, slowly absorbing power, but no more. Don't pull it, let it flow at its natural rate it wants to flow.” She touched the exposed wires and they all winced, having been trained for a lifetime on the inevitable shock and burn. But instead her hand brightened for a second as she made contact, then diminished to a faint glow.

“Imagine I'm a lamp,” Isobel said. “Right.” Salis let go of the wires and motioned her over. When Isobel touched them, a faint spark did flash, and she jumped. But then she closed her eyes and her fingers around them, and the glow appeared once more. Salis smiled.

“So what I'm getting from this exercise,” Isobel said when she was done, “was that Noah didn't have to murder people to power up. He could have just plugged himself in?”

Salis tipped her head in acknowledgment. Privately Michael was relieved at the notion that Noah was just a run of the mill pervert serial killer. It wasn't in their blood, not in the way that Manes accused them of being. But then Salis said, “The experience of taking another's power can be… habit-forming. So I was taught as a child. That is why it is a heinous crime, to be punished by the removal of one's own energy.” She motioned Michael over to the wall.

The wires buzzed in his hand, in a faintly pleasant way. It almost felt like he was manipulating his powers in reverse, pulling the electrons towards him instead of hurling a force outward. But it did vitalize him, in rather the same way that downing two energy drinks laced with acetone would. It was more difficult than he realized not to draw down the current harder, and when the lights flickered he abruptly let go of the wires to avoid blowing the circuit.

“Your turn, Max,” he said, grinning a bit. Better than any sleep. They should have done this last night, although perhaps with the storm that would have been dicey for Alex's small electrical panel.

Max touched the socket for less than a second before it was sparked and smoked, and all the lights in the cabin winked out. Michael and Isobel both started laughing, as Max hung his head in mock shame.

“Thanks guys. Thanks a lot,” Alex complained, as he got up to flip the breaker. “Maybe practice your alien powers some other place?”

“Yes, practice,” said Salis. “You are very strong, it takes control. This technology was not built for you.”

“Blowing out the lights has been Max's superpower since he was twelve,” Michael deadpanned, and Isobel elbowed him. But it did raise the silent question: was there technology that _was_ built for them? He thought of the reactive glass of the ship fragments, how it responding to touch, and responding to a mental push. Maybe he should have included Max and Isobel in his investigations all these years, pool both their differing powers and their ideas.

The four of them settled back at the kitchen table, one per side, with Alex hovering somewhere in the background, still hooked to his laptop. Salis held out her hands, palms up. “You know of the shared mind space?” she asked.

They all looked at Isobel. “Kinda my specialty,” she said, crossing her arms. “I don't need to be touching to do it, though. I can bring you in just like this.”

“Much easier through touch,” Salis said. “Even the smallest child and oldest feeble ones can join in through touch. I am one of the old and tired, make this easy for me, and them. I will not violate you.”

“Well if you say so then...” Isobel muttered sarcastically. She never had been one to trust others easily, and recent events had made her even less open to it. But Iz apparently wanted answers just as much as they did, for with a roll of eyes she held out her hands too.

In a blink, they were no longer in Alex's cabin, but sitting in Salis's mindscape. Warm. Comfortable. Hazy. Unlike the few times Michael had let Isobel experiment on him, this mindscape wasn't disorienting. He didn't get that pulled in, compelled, puppet feeling as with Isobel, as if he were a whim to her power. Instead it did seem to be a common shared mental space, one that any of them could walk out of at any time.

“Is this the way it normally feels?” Isobel asked. Not out loud for real of course, but “speech” was simply a matter of thinking and will here. “Kind of like a perfect temperature beach.”

“This is how we teach very young children,” Salis said. In her mind she pictured herself as radically younger, just as she had for a flash when communicating with Michael at the prison yesterday. Her internal idealized self. “I was a teacher myself, before the ship, so this takes me back. You've all done this before, at the youngest level of school, you just don't remember.”

Her English was far less labored in mindspace, Michael noticed. Maybe now she wasn't thinking in English at all, but that's just what they heard.

“Why don't we remember?” Michael asked. “I mean, even our names are gone.”

“I'm not sure. We were all in the stasis pods for longer than fifty years, and yet everyone's memories were intact when we awoke at the landing. However, after the crash, your containment pods were placed apart from the ship, buried in a cave, with no power source. That's likely why it eventually had to release you.”

“They ran out of juice, fifty years later,” Michael said. “So it just woke us up and spit us out.”

Salis nodded in the affirmative. “I would guess so. You were lucky; a malfunctioning pod can do great harm. It could have left you blank and senseless.”

“That's kind of how we were when we first came out,” Max pointed out. “Mom said it was like we were listening and learning everything, trying to absorb it. Well except for Michael, who was drawing on the walls.”

In the sand next to him – which Michael hadn't noticed until that second – Max drew the three-circle design that they were all familiar with down to their bones, that Max had tattooed on his back. “He was drawing this. What is it? Our home system?”

“Yes, of course. The three habitable planets around out sun, Rilla, Bruma, Darta. Rilla was the evolutionary home planet, the other two were terraformed thousands of years ago. The symbol is specific to an alliance of peace between the three factions. The same alliance that sent the ship to Earth.”

“Noah said we came from a war-torn, desolate planet,” Max said, which was intriguing news to Michael. _Damn_ a lot had happened in the past 24 hours. “From what little he let on, it sounded pretty bad. Is that why you decided to come to Earth? Shiny new planet to replace the old?”

“Best to start the story at the beginning,” Salis said. “It's been, perhaps, five thousand Earth years since the Rillans began to rapidly advance in technology. Explore space. And also explore the limits of the mind and body. Much like Earth is embarking on now,” she said, with regret in her voice. “We had hoped to get here before that point, but human culture had a growth spurt. The hope was to guide humans around the pitfalls of this phase of development, avoid the mistakes of our past. But I'm getting ahead of the story again.

“Just like Earth now, growth in technology was mirrored by a growth of destructive capability. Again this was true of the ecosystem of the planet, true of society, and true of the individual mind and soul. There had always been people with the power to speak mind to mind, and to control electromagnetic fields great and small. During this period, those abilities were analyzed, universalized and enhanced.”

“So, like genetic engineering,” Michael said.

“You could call it that. I'm given to understand that more than simple genes are involved, but I am not a bioengineer. I know more of the history of the result: that through hubris, our ancestors thought they could make a superior being, one that would escape all the primitive competitive behaviors of the past. Of course, they only brought those same impulses forward with them, along with a new set of complex problems. Such change requires time to adjust, and much wisdom. And for many centuries, there was no such wisdom on any of the three settled worlds.

“In the ensuing years, the biosphere on Rilla was greatly degraded, even as it was enhanced on the other, newer worlds. The terraforming expertise of Bruma and Darta could have been used to repair the damage, but by then a great rivalry had formed between the three, preventing the exchange of knowledge and biological materials. Population control had to be enforced, even though having children together is one of the great pleasures of the bonding. Compliance was poor, leading to the development of two populations on Rilla: the eldest children, legally approved to be in existence, and their younger siblings, who were not.

“Th Alliance began to form in my grandparent's generation, on the stations orbiting the three worlds. Only there could more collaborative efforts be carried out, both in trade and scientific expertise. The details of surviving in space were perfected. And from there a grand idea began – that Rilla was not the only planet in the galaxy, or even the neighborhood, to have life on it. That, since so much diversity had been lost on the home planet, perhaps an infusion from others would be beneficial.

“Attention turned to Earth as the best prospect, but there were two others as well. Two other ships. I do not know their fates. But Earth was a lively, lush planet, with a native population that superficially looked much like us. Bruma had sent out probes and explorers many centuries before, so the data was somewhat old, but what is old in evolutionary time? The explorers reported a completely compatible planet teeming with life, as yet only mildly abused by its resident sentient species.

“For each ship, three bond-pairs were chosen as symbolic leaders. Each had bonded across planetary lines, in the face of great opposing social pressure. My family was from Bruma, my partner Altric as from Rilla. He died in the crash. He was a _samaltris.”_ Salis stopped and frowned. “That did not translate for you. An artist of food?”

“Like a chef,” Michael murmured.

“Chef, yes perhaps that is the best word. Your parents” – she motioned towards Max – “were from Darta and Bruma. Your mother was a soldier, in defense of the station. Your father a bioengineer. Linel's parents” – now she nodded towards Isobel – “from Darta and Rilla. One mother an expert on plants for terraforming, the other a physician of the mind, a servant of the poor. You see how it fits together? Symmetry between the three pairs? Many professional trades represented?”

They all nodded. In rapt attention, through the whole story.

“We were all young, and in the spirit of the expedition decided to have our children at about the same time. Each of us, our one and only child. In the short years leading up to the launch, you were the symbols of promise and hope and cooperation. A reuniting of the three worlds, in three children.”

“How did the ship crash?” Michael asked softly.

“There was a saboteur aboard. Some fanatic opposed to the cooperation of the three worlds, who would rather watch everything burn. There are such people on Earth as well, I have observed. He caused the ship to drop shielding in the atmosphere and land in the wrong place. All the adults had been awakened from the pods in preparation for landing, but we left the children in. You were never awake for the crash.”

Just then, Michael became aware of a commotion from outside the mindspace link. _Guerin! Michael! Max! Wake the fuck up!_ And someone pulling his hands away, diminising the link, dragging them back into the normal world.

Michael opened his eyes and blinked. “Jesus, what? We were just getting to the good part.”

“My father is here,” hissed Alex. “Maybe you want to hide your alien asses?”

Salis, too, opened her eyes. “No,” she said. “I am no longer a prisoner. I tried hiding after the crash, and all it achieved was decades of misery. I will no longer hide for one human soldier.” She looked up at the three of them. Waiting. Ready to do battle, even Isobel, Michael noted.

“Capture him,” she said. And the three of them knew what to do.

Isobel's attack was the most straightforward, and the most debilitating. Michael knocked the wind out of him with a sharp thwack, and Isobel took over from there. She simply snapped him into her own mindspace, a temporary prison. Eventually Manes would have the presence of mind to break free, but in the short term, mental befuddlement and surprise worked wonders. Outside the window, Master Sergeant Manes dropped lie a sack of potatoes. Michael and Max walked out and dragged him in, taking the weapon. As far they could tell, Manes had come alone. Obviously he wasn't expecting to ind them there.

They duct-taped him to chair, with Isobel and Salis staring at him the whole while. “Hurry, guys, I've never had to do this for long,” Isobel murmured.

“Touch him,” Salis said. “So much easier.”

“I don't want to,” Isobel said.

“Then I will.” And indeed she put her hands on his face, and the struggling grimace Manes had all over his face vanished into their dual mindspace. “Let go now, child,” she told Isobel.

“What are you going to do?” Alex asked softly. “Please don't… well, I guess I don't mind hurting. Don't kill him. He's my father.”

“A parental obligation. I understand. Varis, come here. Touch him too.”

“Why?” Michael said. “I'm no good with the mind control stuff.”

“I need a witness. One your _shadich_ will trust.”

Michael still didn't know what a _shadich_ was, but he had his suspicions. He raised a palm up and rested it on top of Salis's hand, on the side of Manes's head.

He both was in the mindscape and out of it, able to hear Alex and the others. An incomplete connection. Perhaps that's how his mother wanted it.

“What is she going to do to him?” Alex asked him. It sounded far away.

“Re-education,” Michael said.

The shared mental space changed, morphed. It was no longer the benign children's haven, but now a true prison of the will. Manes appeared tiny, as if an insect, captured in a bottle and about to be squashed.

 _I want you to know,_ Salis told him, _the only reason I'm keeping you alive is that your son requested it. An individual of high bravery and honor. An excellent choice for my son, one I hope he decides on._

 _You mean my pervert son, the alien-lover, the traitor?_ Manes mentally spit out. _Maybe I'd rather die than be infected by the likes of you._

_You'd rather die? Tempting. But an agreement is an agreement. I, too, was once a person of honor, before your kind got to me._

And through the mindspace, into Manes's own brain, Salis began to slash. Perhaps it was not unlike teaching in reverse, for instead of putting information in, she took it out. Everything alien-related, out. Everything military-related, out. Most of Manes's adulthood was out, then, except his wife and children. Those she left in, along with his long-past childhood.

 _Who are you?_ he asked when she was done.

 _Alex's friend,_ she replied. _Do you remember how to get home?_

 _Of course I do,_ he said, insulted. _Where's home?_

 _Alex will take you,_ she said. _You love him, remember?_

Opening his eyes, Michael told Alex, “It's done. Your dad's...probably going to need you and your brothers' help now. But he's never gonna hurt us or anyone else again.”

“Good thing I have a lot of brothers,” Alex said. Despite the desperate circumstances, despite all the abuse and hate, Alex looked like he was ready to mourn.

* * * * *

Later, after Alex and Michael had dropped off his father and called Flint, after Max and Isobel had left to temporarily deal with their own adult lives, on the ride home, Alex was finally ready to talk.

“Michael, what's a _shadich_?” he asked

“You know, I never directly asked. You can ask her yourself when we get home, you know. But I think it's a potential bondmate. Someone you meet and fall in love, and who loves you back. Someone you could possibly choose.”

“What does all that mean with a human?”

“Absolutely no idea,” Michael said, and grinned at him. “Maybe its one-sided. Maybe we suck you in with our devious soulmarks. Maybe no one's done it before, and we won't know until we try.”

“Do you want to try?” Alex asked.

“How about an actual date first?” Michael said. And then both of them, together couldn't help but laugh.


End file.
